Classical philosophy and Darwinian biology are far more compatible than is usually assumed. In fact, looking at either from the standpoint of the other can enrich and deepen our appreciation of both. From a Darwinian point of view, the theories of Plato and Aristotle deserve to be taken very seriously. From the classical point of view, Darwinian biology is much less reductionist than its enemies suppose.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Justice is beautiful because it is good and good because it is beautiful

The following is the beginning of the essay I will present next week at the annual meeting of the Association of Politics and Life Sciences. We are meeting in Madison, Wisconsin.

In Book 1 of Plato’s Republic,
Socrates silences the sophist Thrasymachus with his famous “honor among
thieves” argument. Thrasymachus argued
that justice is merely the interest of the stronger, i.e., that right actions
are what subordinates must do in the service of their superiors. Socrates responded that the “stronger” are so
because they are able to cooperate with one another in their drive toward
dominion; and so, they must be just at least toward one another. Justice is then superior injustice even if
you accept the view that all human actions are motivated by selfish
desire.

At the beginning of Book 2, the
spirited brothers Glaucon and Adiemantus announce their dissatisfaction with
this argument and each issues a challenge to Socrates. These challenges come in the form of claims
about what “the many” believe about justice and injustice. The former argues that, in the view of the
many, justice is a mean between the greatest evil and the greatest good. The greatest evil is to be exploited by someone
else. The greatest good is to be able to
exploit others. The many realize that
without restraints on human behavior, they would be the victims rather than the
perpetrators of injustice. They value
justice only as a lesser evil. Glaucon
wants Socrates to show him that this view of justice is not correct, that
justice is something good in itself.

Adiemantus’ view is more
sophisticated. He grants that the many
do speak and act as if justice really were something good in itself; however,
what they genuinely desire is the appearance and not the substance of
justice. Justice is like paper
money. It is valuable only because it is
valued. Righteous men value their
reputation because it wins them partnerships and good marriages for their children. Were it not for such commerce, they would not
bother about it. Adiemantus too wants
Socrates to show him that justice is something good in itself and not something
that is merely instrumental to some selfish end.

The remainder of the Republic is devoted to Socrates’ efforts
to satisfy the two brothers. I believe
that Socrates’ account of justice is convincing. Socrates argues that justice is in fact the
order in a well-ordered soul. When
intelligence governs the passions and the passions govern the appetites, each
part of the tripartite soul doing its own proper business, that is justice. This
account succeeds because it presents justice as something not merely good, but beautiful;
or more precisely, it is good because it is beautiful. That
is what the brothers crave.

In this paper I will be making
something of a defense on his behalf; however, I will do so by focusing on the
simple fact that Glaucon and Adiemantus make their challenges in the first
place. Were Socrates wrong, neither
brother would bother to seek an argument in support of justice. Were Socrates wrong, the popular explanations
of justice that the brothers articulate would not make sense, even in their apparently
diminished forms.

This is important because modern
political theory and philosophical ethics largely accepts the popular views of
justice much as they are articulated by Thrasymachus, Glaucon and Adiemantus. Justice is indeed valuable in so far as it
advances the interests of a population strong enough to defend it. Even then, it is valued only as a token. He who carries the token advertises himself
as a good partner in cooperative ventures.

This view has received important
support in recent years from evolutionary accounts of morality. In the work of Christopher Boehm, Michael
Tomasello, and David Sloan Wilson, morality emerges in the history of human
evolution because it protects the weaker members against the stronger,
encourages mutual obligations, and thus allows small groups of humans to
effectively compete with other, equally rapacious bands of brothers. All of human history over the last twelve
thousand years or so represents a innovation built out of evolutionary
components. When one group assimilated
another rather than annihilating it, bending the assimilated group to its
service, much as one organism occasionally assimilates and exploits another,
civilization was born. For this to work,
the dominate group must effectively cooperate and to do that competitive behavior
within the dominate group must be controlled.
We are back to honor among thieves.

I will argue that the moral (or
the just) could only have functioned in that way because human beings are naturally
inclined to see it as beautiful. The
beautiful thing is good because it is noble, beautiful to behold. In turn, Socrates argues on many occasions in
both Plato’s works and the Socratic dialogues of Xenophon, that the good is
beautiful. Socrates admires a beautiful
set of armor because he can see that it was exquisitely tailored to some
individual other than himself. It was
good for the armorer’s client in so far as it fit him. It was good for Socrates only in so far as it
was beautiful. Beauty transcends the
good which gives it birth.

To take another example from
evolutionary psychology, imagine a beautiful house. Now imagine that there is a verdant forest
just behind it, and beyond that a range of hills. Large picture windows at the front give views
of a plain dotted with trees. Not too
far in the distance is a river or lake. That
is a valuable piece of real estate.
Why? Our ancestors needed access
to water and to the occasional prey that gathered there. They also had to fear predators and other
human beings. They liked to be able to
see what was coming and to have somewhere to retreat to. Our notion of what is a beautiful home was
forged as our ancestors moved about and succeeded in finding places that allowed
them to flourish and thus become our ancestors.
A Montana ranch house I once visited has all of these elements but none
of them were necessary for survival. It
was good because it was beautiful.

We like to tell stories in which
the wicked are defeated and the just triumph.
These stories are beautiful to us because we have a taste for
justice. That taste was a product of
evolution because it promoted the successful reproduction of our great great… grandmothers
and grandfathers. That the taste for
justice was selected for in our evolution doesn’t change the fact that the
object of the taste often has nothing to do with our own reproductive success. We admire justice even when it has nothing to
do with us just as we admire a beautiful painting of a beautiful house that we
can never live in. In that way the taste
for the noble transcends the good from which it was born.

In this essay I will show that
inequity aversion, the human distaste for injustice in both two party exchanges
and in observations of third party exchanges, show that Socrates was
right.